


Class Action

by rivkat



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a new lawyer in town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Class Action

**Author's Note:**

> This was started years ago, when Yuletide allowed Discworld, which helps date it some. Thanks to katarik for beta. Also, I tried to follow instructions for making footnotes accessible; if I made a mistake, I am very sorry.

Pecunia Loquitur hurried to catch up with Lord Vetinari as he walked away from the council chamber. Other notables of Ankh-Morpork averted their eyes, on the perfectly reasonable theory that what they had not seen, had not occurred, and therefore Lord Vetinari could not hold whatever had not occurred against them.1 "Lord Vetinari!" she barked.

Everyone within hearing range cringed, with the exception of Lord Vetinari, who moved down the hall with no hesitation in stride. These reactions, singularly and in combination, should have provided Pecunia with cause to reconsider her mission, but she was relatively new in town. She was convinced that half of Vetinari's influence over the inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork was due to his mystique, and that such a paper tiger, once challenged, could not stand.

Pecunia was right about the mystique. What she failed to understand was that mystique is a mightier thing, perhaps, than armies, when deployed in the right circumstances.

She strode forward double-time, and managed to grab Lord Vetinari's shoulder. By this point, the hallway was otherwise unoccupied and gave the impression of having been so for months, if not years. The very stones seemed to be creeping away from Pecunia, slowly and quietly so as not to be noticed.

"Lord Vetinari," she said again.

She didn't notice exactly how Vetinari got out from under her grip, which was a strong one, trained by years of tough meetings. Pecunia was from Vanglemesh, an area of the Discworld so poor and isolated that immigrants therefrom often stopped in Uberwald, stunned by the luxury of the peasantry there, and never attempted to go any further. Vanglemesh's sole natural resource was its inhabitants, who were therefore raised in ways that, while not very natural, left them resourceful indeed.

In other words, Vanglemesh operated the Discworld's largest and most successful law school.

The undead lawyers of Ankh-Morpork, when they had seen (as well as the zombies among them could see, what with the half-rotted eyes) Pecunia's diploma, had all nodded condescendingly as their guts clenched with fear. Because they were undead, the gut-clenching was visible on more than a few of them, so Pecunia had known they were impressed.

Given that reception, Pecunia had been expecting a more respectful welcome from Lord Vetinari. Ruler he might be, but the man wasn't even a zombie, let alone a lawyer.

Yet Vetinari had ignored her attempts to enter the conversation at the meeting, which was supposedly an occasion for the city's important citizens to take up issues of concern with the city's rulers, but had seemed to be an occasion for Vetinari to make brief, cryptic statements that tended to make at least one person in the room blanch and excuse himself shortly thereafter. The one man who had been able to get a request in edgewise—by virtue of taking his knife out and sticking it in the table, that is—had been a visiting merchant complaining about conditions on the docks, and Vetinari had assured him that his concerns would be dealt with quickly. He'd seemed altogether too accommodating; Pecunia couldn't figure out why everyone else seemed to be so intimidated. And then, shortly thereafter, Vetinari had ended the meeting, with the fervent thanks of the other attendees.

Now, Vetinari was standing in the hallway, looking at Pecunia with the air of a man who has opened the door to his home at the end of a wearying day, poised to receive greetings from his wife and children, and has been confronted instead with a circus clown and a horse on a bicycle.

"May I help you?" Vetinari asked, politely.

Pecunia smiled. "Yes, you may. My name is Pecunia Loquitur. I'm a lawyer."

Usually this pronouncement produced gratifying shock and dismay in the hearer, but Vetinari only smiled.

"New in town, Ms. Loquitur? How do you find our Guild?"

The Guild of Lawyers had been pitifully easy to take over. It had made Pecunia ashamed of the profession. "Very well, Lord Vetinari—may I call you Havelock?"

Vetinari's expression didn't slip at all. If anything, his smile grew wider and more natural. "I hope you will."

"Well, then, Havelock—the Guild has not been among the more active of the city's guilds of late, and I plan to change that. For example, the gentleman known as CMOT Dibbler has been operating openly, in violation of principles of fraud, false advertising, oppression, negligence, trademark infringement, unjust enrichment, undue burden—"

Pecunia let herself be cut off by Vetinari's raised hand, which was a good thing as she was running out of names for "putting items of dubious provenance inna bun and selling them." If she had to file a complaint, she could go on for twenty pages at least, but orally the charges began to sound repetitive.

"Ms. Loquitur—"

"Pecunia, please."

Vetinari was unfazed by this unsought intimacy. "Pecunia, I appreciate your concern for the health and well-being of the citizens of Ankh-Morpork—"

_Is that what I was expressing?_ Pecunia wondered.

"But the citizens of Ankh-Morpork are a hardy lot, hardier perhaps than those from more distant portions of the Disc might realize at first. What to you is a dangerous and adulterated sausage—I should say, meat product—I should say, product—is to an Ankh-Morporkian a classic local delicacy, one that Mr. Dibbler has offered for decades now." In truth, some of the "sausages" on CMOT Dibbler's cart had been on offer for far longer than that, but Lord Vetinari doubtless felt that precise dating would be a needless complication in his conversation with the lawyer.

Triumph flashed in Pecunia's eyes. "But surely, Havelock, that is a matter for a court and a jury of Mr. Dibbler's peers to decide. If you're right, the action will fail and Mr. Dibbler will be exonerated. But if I am right, the citizens will gain a protection they currently lack."

Vetinari had stopped walking when Pecunia put herself in front of him. Now, however, his stillness gained an extra quality, a heavy ingathering, almost expectant. Lord Vetinari had never discounted a danger in his life, which did much to account for the length of that life and his continuing rule over Ankh-Morpork. It had been his experience, however, that stupid people were more dangerous than smart ones, if only because they didn't know what was likely to go wrong with their simple plans. They took risks that no intelligent person would take, and sometimes they succeeded. Only the very smartest people could reach the same level of threat as a stupid person. He had immediately seen that Pecunia Loquitur was a smart woman. He was now considering that she might be very smart indeed.

Which was really too bad.

"Your point has some force," he conceded. "Though assembling a jury of Mr. Dibbler's peers might well require emptying the jails. What is it that you wish me to do?"

Pecunia smiled, and Lord Vetinari watched her smile.

****

The judicial system of Ankh-Morpork was, naturally, neither judicious nor systematic.

On the criminal side, there were essentially two available punishments: "get locked up until you've slept it off" and "death." Intermediate sanctions were few and far between, for the simple reason that Ankh-Morpork had difficulty sustaining a large number of unproductive souls—even CMOT Dibbler contributed to the economic vitality of the city, in his own special way (which way involved extra business for the town's various healers as well as its garbagemen)—and prisoners are notoriously unproductive. Lord Vetinari, whose palace dungeons held the occasional felon "at his lordship's pleasure" and was very seldom pleased, had reports indicating that a prisoner was more expensive to feed, house and care for per year than a wizard studying at Unseen University.2 Given how much wizards eat, this was something of a natural wonder.

For that reason, Ankh-Morporkian criminal sentences were generally brief and usually culminated in a full stop. Nor were there many formalities observed in criminal trials, since Patricians had rarely allowed criminal trials. Generally, they acted as judge, jury, and in several notable cases, executioner, though Lord Vetinari was not known to have personally executed a criminal in some time.3 These days, Vimes would usually bring an offender before Vetinari, explain what the poor bugger had done, and wait while Vetinari pronounced his judgment. Sometimes the result was a fine, or exile, but death was an ever-present possibility (and indeed Death often observed the proceedings in case his services were called for), which was why Vimes always insisted on presenting the evidence himself. He would bring the investigating officer or officers, but he was always there. On days he presented criminals to the Patrician, he generally went back to the office before returning home to Lady Sybil, and sat for a while, contemplating the bottle hidden in the back of his desk drawer.

None of this comported with the principles set forth in the Big Chart, a carefully constructed diagram presented by the nobles of Ankh-Morpork to Mad King Luttvak, the third to last King of Ankh-Morpork before Vimes' ancestor put paid to the idea of kings (as well as putting paid to one particular king, which was arguably more significant than the ideological point). The Big Chart, though having its origins in a dispute between nobles annoyed at having to give up absolute control over their peons, on the one hand, and a king annoyed at being asked to allow the nobles to be mini-kings, on the other, was generally considered to be a foundational document in the development of constitutional systems across the Discworld.

Which might explain why constitutional systems on the Discworld were in limited supply. The Big Chart was heavy on grandiose proclamations, each set forth in a nicely drawn oval or parallelogram, but the connections between those proclamations were confusing at best and implausible at worst, like a diagram attempting to show relationships between wizards at Unseen University, with red for hate and blue for affection, dotted lines for prior relationships and solid lines for current associations, and squiggles for relations that weren't appropriate to describe to the general public. Philosophers had debated what the various colors and textures on the Big Chart meant for centuries, and so far the greatest area of consensus was that the sqiggles did *not* stand for relations that weren't appropriate to describe to the general public.

They still weren't sure about the cross-hatched lines.

****

Pecunia ran into the Watch House and slammed the door behind her. The rumble of the mob from outside suggested the reason for her haste. "I need the assistance of the law!" she cried, managing to sound as if there were no doubt whatsoever that she would get it.

After a distinct pause, Nobbs creaked forwards. "Er, what's the matter?"

"I am in mortal danger!"

Nobbs scratched at his nose. "I'll get the Commander."

****

Five minutes later, Pecunia was standing in Vimes' office, though privately Vimes felt as if she'd been there far longer. None of the rioters had the stones to attack a Watch House directly, and they'd run out of tomatoes, so mostly they were yelling insults and shoving each other. He calculated that they had about fifteen more minutes before the steam would run out.

"How did he do it?" Pecunia asked Commander Vimes as he continued to observe the ruckus outside, just in case he'd made some sort of mistake about its stamina. She didn't need to explain who "he" was. "I selected only jurors whose answers to my questions clearly indicated their dissatisfaction with the current governance system! They were ready to vote to make the city government liable for Dibbler's crimes! They *wanted* to vote that way before I said a word, and when they retired to deliberate they were ready to revolt!"

Privately, Vimes suspected that the jurors had already been revolting. On principle, he wasn't opposed to challenging the ruling class—a position that gave him not inconsiderable difficulty now that he was, technically, the ruling class, and more trouble when he thought of Young Sam's status. As long as Pecunia wasn't speaking in favor of kings, he was willing to listen to her arguments for changing Ankh-Morpork.

"I expect," Vimes said, "that he helped them see something you couldn't."

"And what was that?" she demanded.

Vimes considered the matter. Twelve citizens, good and true—or, twelve citizens of Ankh-Morpork, so maybe best to stop the description there—had deliberated, and come to the conclusion that Pecunia was a greater threat to their well-being than CMOT Dibbler's wares. He thought about the Post Office, and the Bank, and the other changes to Ankh-Morpork since he'd put on his copper's uniform so many years ago now.

"The world's different now, see?" Pecunia stared at him as if he'd shrunk into a dwarf and started to dance. "Getting smaller all the time. New people—well, new things that might take your job or your girl. New jobs that your ma wouldn't have known from a puddle on the ground. What's a clacks operator, after all? Times like this, people want a bit of what they've always had, just to make sure the world's still got something that isn't turning round and round."

"You are suggesting," Pecunia said with great seriousness, "that Dibbler's quasi sausages are the axis around which the Discworld spins?"

Vimes frowned, considering. "Isn't that the turtles? I don't know about the world, Miss Loquitur. I know about Ankh-Morpork. And I know that when you get in between the high and the low, you might just find that they've joined hands to squash you."

****

"I thought you might like to know," Vimes told Vetinari as they walked towards Unseen University, there to inspect the wizards' latest invention,4 "Pecunia Loquitur has left the city."

"Ah yes," Vetinari replied, looking down at the cobblestones. "I understand she founded some sort of law reform commission and is beginning an investigative survey of ten different jurisdictions. Intelligent young woman."

Intelligent enough to leave town, anyway, Vimes thought. Vetinari should be giving the reports to him, seemed like, with all he knew before Vimes did. "You think she'll be back?" he asked.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Vetinari said mildly. "There may be a day Ankh-Morpork has need of the kind of ... complicated services Miss Loquitur has to offer."

Vimes shuddered at the thought. Lawyers now, and not good old-fashioned zombie lawyers.

But that was the future for you, he thought. Always changing on you. And if Pecunia Loquitur learned that much from her collision with Dibbler's sausages and the rabble that bought and, occasionally, comprised them, then maybe she'd be cut out for Ankh-Morpork life after all.

 

1 The Wizards of Unseen University are perfectly capable of holding what has not occurred against a person. Of course, the average sweetheart is the same way when what has not occurred is the arrival of a very nice bunch of flowers or a heartfelt apology for lateness, but in the Wizards' case the holding can be literal. In the Century of the Fruit-Bat, one unfortunate student went so far as to construct a set of robes out of thread spun from unhappened events. They were very flashy and the student was for a time both envied and feared, exactly as he'd desired. Then, the events previously cushioning the student's posterior region unexpectedly happened while the student was in the dining hall, walking away from the High Table. The subsequent melee, while contributing to the mosaic of spilled and spattered food that passes for décor in the dining hall, did nothing for the student's reputation, and he ultimately transferred to a more forgiving institution. ↑

2 Though substantially less likely to explode or turn into a fish. ↑

3 For standard values of "known," "executed," and "criminal." Vetinari's single observable quirk was a deep distaste for mimes, who generally found themselves trying to use invisible stairs or ladders to climb out of Vetinari's scorpion pit while staring at a large sign reading "Learn the Words." Even that practice provided both uplifting entertainment for the citizens and employment for scorpion-breeders, and thus was rather a boon to the city's economy than a drag on it. ↑

4 Technically, Vetinari would ask questions, and, if past was precedent, Vimes would duck and organize the defense, but the invitation had mentioned only inspection. ↑

  
End


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